They delivered the temple treasure into the hands of the King--sevenchests filled with money and valuables, among them a silver cupwhich the wretched King Svend had sent to Svantevit as a bribe tothe Wends for joining him against his own country and kin. But thosedays were ended. It was the Danes' turn now, and Wendland was laidwaste until "the swallows found no eaves of any house whereunder tobuild their nests and were forced to build them on the ships." A sadpreliminary to bringing the country under the rule of the Prince ofPeace; but in the scheme of those days the sword was equal partnerwith the cross in leading men to the true God.

The heathen temples were destroyed and churches built on theirsites of the timber gathered for the siege of Arcona. The people,deserted by their own, accepted the Christians' God in good faith,and were baptized in hosts, thirteen hundred on one day and ninehundred on the next. Three days and nights Absalon saw no sleep. Hedid nothing half-way. No sooner was he back home than he sent overpriests and teachers supplied with everything, even food for theirkeep, so that they "should not be a burden to the people whom theyhad come to show the way to salvation."

The Wends were conquered, but the end was not yet. They had savageneighbors, and many a crusade did Absalon lead against them in thefollowing years, before the new title of the Danish rulers, "King ofthe Slavs and Wends," was much more than an empty boast. Heorganized a regular sea patrol of one-fourth of the available ships,of which he himself took command, and said mass on board muchoftener than in the Roskilde church. It is the sailor, the warrior,the leader of men one sees through all the troubled years of hisroyal friend's life. Now the Danish fleet is caught in the inlandsea before Stettin, unable to make its way out, and already theheathen hosts are shouting their triumph on shore. It is Absalon,then, who finds the way and, as one would expect, he forces it. Thecaptains wail over the trap and abuse him for getting them into it.Absalon, disdaining to answer them, leads his ships in single filestraight for the gap where the Wendish fleet lies waiting, and getsthe King to attack with his horsemen on shore. Between them theenemy is routed, and the cowards are shamed. But when they come tomake amends, he is as unmoved as ever and will have none of it.Again, when he is leading his men to the attack on a walled town, abridge upon which they crowd breaks, and it is the bishop who saveshis comrades from drowning, swimming ashore with them in full armor.

Resting in his castle at Haffn, the present Copenhagen, which hebuilt as a defence against the sea-rovers, he hears, while in hisbath, his men talking of strange ships that are sailing into theSound, and, hastily throwing on his clothes, gives chase and killstheir crews, for they were pirates whose business was murder, andthey merely got their deserts. In the pursuit his archers "pinnedthe hands of the rowers to the oars with their arrows" and crippledthem, so skilful had much practice made them. Turn the leaf ofSaxo's chronicle, and we find him under Ruegen with his fleet,protecting the now peaceful Wendish fishermen in their autumnherring-catch, on which their livelihood depended. Of such stuff wasmade the bishop who

"Used his trusty Danish sword As the Pope his staff in Rome."

Wherever danger threatens Valdemar and Absalon, Esbern is found,too, earning the name of the Fleet (Snare), which the people hadfondly given to their favorite. Where the fighting was hardest, hewas sure to be. The King's son had ventured too far and was caughtin a tight place by an overwhelming force, when Esbern pushed hisship in between him and the enemy and bore the brunt of a fight thatcame near to making an end of him. He had at last only a single manleft, but the two made a stand against a hundred. "When the heathensaw his face they fled in terror." At last they knocked himsenseless with a stone and would have killed him, but in the nick oftime the King's men came to the rescue.

Coming home from Norway he ran afoul of forty pirate ships underthe coast of Seeland. He tried to steal past; forty against one wereheavy odds. But it was moonlight and he was discovered. The pirateslay across his course and cut him off. Esbern made ready for a fightand steered straight into the middle of them. The steersmancomplained that he had no armor, and he gave him his own. He beathis pursuers off again and again, but the wind slackened and theywere closing in once more, swearing by their heathen gods that theywould have him dead or alive, for a Danish prisoner on one of theirships had told who he was. But Esbern had more than one string tohis bow. He sent a man aloft with flint and steel to strike fire inthe top, and the pirates, believing that he was signalling to afleet he had in ambush, fled helter-skelter. Esbern got home safe.

The German emperors' fingers had always itched for the over-lordshipof the Danish isles, and they have not ceased to do so to this day.When Frederick Barbarossa drove Alexander III from Rome and set up arival Pope in his place, Archbishop Eskild of Lund, who was thePrimate of the North, championed the exiled Pope's case, andValdemar, whose path the ambitious priest had crossed more thanonce, let it be known that he inclined to the Emperor's cause, inpart probably from mere pique, perhaps also because he thought itgood politics. The archbishop in a rage summoned Absalon and badehim join him in a rising against the King. Absalon's answer isworthy the man and friend:

"My oath to you I will keep, and in this wise, that I will notcounsel you to your own undoing. Whatever your cause against theKing, war against him you cannot, and succeed. And this know, thatnever will I join with you against my liege lord, to whom I havesworn fealty and friendship with heart and soul all the days of mylife."

He could not persuade the archbishop, who went his own way and wasbeaten and exiled for a season, nor could he prevent the King fromyielding to the blandishments of Frederick and getting mixed up inthe papal troubles; but he went with him to Germany and saved him atthe last moment from committing himself by making him leave thechurch council just as the anti-pope was about to pronounce sentenceof excommunication against Alexander. He commanded Absalon toremain, as a servant of the church, but Absalon replied calmly thathe was not there in that capacity, but as an attendant on his King,and must follow where he went. It appeared speedily that theEmperor's real object was to get Valdemar to own him as hisover-lord, and this he did, to Absalon's great grief, on the idlepromise that Frederick would join him in his war upon all the Balticpagans. However, it was to be a purely personal matter, in nowiseaffecting his descendants. That much was saved, and Absalon livedlong enough to fling back, as the counsellor of Valdemar's son, frombehind the stout wall he built at Denmark's southern gate, theEmperor's demand for homage, with the reply that "the King ruled inDenmark with the same right as the Emperor in Germany, and was noman's subject."

However grievously Absalon had offended the aged archbishop, whenafter forty years in his high office illness compelled him to lay itdown, he could find no one so worthy to step into his shoes. He sentsecretly to Rome and got the Pope's permission to name his ownsuccessor, before he called a meeting of the church. The account ofwhat followed is the most singular of all Saxo's stories. Valdemardid not know what was coming and, fearing fresh trouble, got thearchbishop to swear on the bones of the saints before them all thathe was not moved to abdication by hate of the King, or by anycoercion whatever. Then the venerable priest laid his staff, hismitre, and his ring on the altar and announced that he had done withit all forever. But he had made up his mind not to use the powergiven him by the Pontiff. They might choose his successorthemselves. He would do nothing to influence their action.

The bishops and clergy went to the King and asked him if he had anychoice. The King said he had, but if he made it known he would getno thanks for it and might estrange his best friend. If he did not,he would certainly be committing a sin. He did not know what to do.

"Name him," said they, and Valdemar told them it was the bishop ofRoskilde.

At that the old archbishop got up and insisted on the election thenand there; but Absalon would have none of it. The burden was tooheavy for his shoulders, he said. However, the clergy seized him,"being," says Saxo, who without doubt was one of them, "the moreemboldened to do so as the archbishop himself laid hands upon himfirst." Intoning the hymn sung at archiepiscopal consecrations, theytried to lead him to the altar. He resisted with all his might andknocked several of the brethren down. Vestments were torn andscattered, and a mighty ruction arose, to which the laity, not to beoutdone, added by striking up a hymn of their own. Archbishop andKing tried vainly to make peace; the clamor and battle only rose thehigher. Despite his struggles, Absalon was dragged to the high seat,but as they were about to force him into it, he asked leave to say asingle word, and instantly appealed his case to the Pope. So therewas an end; but when the aged Eskild, on the plea of weakness,begged him to pronounce the benediction, he refused warily, becauseso he would be exercising archiepiscopal functions and would be _defacto_ incumbent of the office.[4]

[Footnote 4: That all this in no way affected the personal relationsof the two men Saxo assures us in one of the little human toucheswith which his chronicle abounds. When Eskild was going away to endhis days as a monk in the monastery of Clairvaux, he rested awhilewith Absalon at his castle Haffn, where he was received as a father.The old man suffered greatly from cold feet, and Absalon made a boxwith many little holes in, and put a hot brick in it. With this athis feet, Eskild was able to sleep, and he was very grateful toAbsalon, both because of the comfort it gave him and "because thathe perceived that filial piety rather than skill in the healer'sart" prompted the invention.]

Here, as always, Absalon thought less of himself than of hiscountry, so the event showed. For when the Pope heard his plea,though he decided against him, he allowed him to hold the bishopricof Roskilde together with the higher office, and so he was left atValdemar's side to help finish their work of building up Denmarkwithin and without. At Roskilde he spent, as a matter of fact, mostof his time while Valdemar lived. At Lund he would have been in adistant part of the country, parted from his friend and out of touchwith the things that were the first concern of his life.

They were preparing to aim a decisive blow against the Pomeranianpagans when Valdemar died, on the very day set for the sailing. Theparting nearly killed Absalon. Saxo draws a touching picture of himweeping bitterly as he said the requiem mass over his friend, andobserves: "Who can doubt that his tears, rising with the incense,gave forth a peculiar and agreeable savour in high heaven beforeGod?" The plowmen left their fields and carried the bier, with sobsand lamentations, to the church in Ringsted, where the great Kingrests. His sorrow laid Absalon on a long and grievous sick-bed, fromwhich he rose only when Valdemar's son needed and called him.

In the fifteen years that follow we see his old warlike spirit stillunbroken. Thus his defiance of the German Emperor, whose anger washot. Frederick, in revenge, persuaded the Pomeranian duke Bugislavto organize a raid on Denmark with a fleet of five hundred sail.Scant warning reached Absalon of the danger. King Knud was away, andthere was no time to send for him. Mustering such vessels as werenear, he sailed across the Baltic and met the enemy under Ruegen theday after Whitsuntide (1184). The bishop had gone ashore to say masson the beach, when word was brought that the great fleet was insight. Hastily pulling off his robe and donning armor instead, hemade for his ship with the words: "Now let our swords sing thepraise of God." The Pomeranians were taken completely by surprise.They did not know the Danes were there, and when they heard thearchbishop's dreaded war-cry raised, they turned and fled in suchterror and haste that eighteen of their ships were run down and sunkwith all on board. On one, a rower hanged himself for fear offalling into the hands of the Danes. Absalon gave chase, and therout became complete. Of the five hundred ships only thirty-fiveescaped; all the rest were either sunk or taken. Duke Bugislav soonafter became a vassal of Denmark, and of the Emperor's plots therewas an end.

It was the last blow, and the story of it went far and wide.Absalon's work was nearly done. Denmark was safe from her enemies.The people were happy and prosperous. Valdemar's son ruledunchallenged, and though he was childless, by his side stood hisbrother, a manly youth who, not yet full grown, had already shownsuch qualities of courage and sagacious leadership that the oldarchbishop could hang up the sword with heart at ease. The promisewas kept. The second Valdemar became Denmark's royal hero for alltime. Absalon's last days were devoted to strengthening the Church,around which he had built such a stout wall. He built churches andcloisters, and guided them with a wise and firm hand. And he madeSaxo, his clerk, set it all down as an eye-witness of these things,and as one who came to the task by right; for, says the chronicler,"have not my grandfather and his father before him served the Kingwell on land and sea, hence why should not I serve him with mybook-learning?" He bears witness that the bishop himself is hisauthority for much that he has written.

Archbishop Absalon closed his eyes on St. Benedict's Day, March 21,1201, in the cloister at Soroe which Sir Asker built and where helived his last days in peace. Absalon's statue of bronze, onhorseback, battle-axe in hand, stands in the market square inCopenhagen, the city he founded and of which he is the patron saint;but his body lies within the quiet sanctuary where, in the deepforest glades, one listens yet for the evensong of the monks, longsilent now. When his grave was opened, in 1826, the lines of histall form, clad in clerical robes, were yet clearly traceable. Thestrong hands, turned to dust, held a silver chalice in which lay hisepiscopal ring. They are there to be seen to-day, with remnants ofhis staff that had partly crumbled away. No Dane approaches hisgrave without emotion. "All Denmark grieved for him," says a Germanwriter of that day, "and commended his soul to Jesus Christ, thePrince of Peace, for that in his lifetime he had led many who wereenemies to peace and concord." In his old cathedral, in Roskildetown, lies Saxo, according to tradition under an unmarked stone.When he went to rest his friend and master had slept five years.

Esbern outlived his brother three years. The hero of so many battlesmet his death at last by an accidental fall in his own house. Thelast we hear of him is at a meeting in the Christmas season, 1187,where emissaries of Pope Gregory VIII preached a general crusade.Their hearers wept at the picture they drew of the sufferingsChristians were made to endure in the Holy Land. Then arose Esbernand reminded them of the great deeds of the fathers at home andabroad. The faith and the fire of Absalon were in his words:

"These things they did," he said, "for the glory of their name andrace, knowing nothing of our holy religion. Shall we, believing, doless? Let us lay aside our petty quarrels and take up this greatercause. Let us share the sufferings of the saints and earn theirreward. Perhaps we shall win--God keeps the issue. Let him whocannot give himself, give of his means. So shall all we, sharing thepromise, share also the reward."

The account we have says that many took the cross, such was theeffect of his words, more likely of the man and what he was and hadbeen in the sight of them all throughout his long life.

KING VALDEMAR, AND THE STORY OF THE DANNEBROG

To the court of King Ottocar of Bohemia there came in the year 1205a brilliant embassy from far-off Denmark to ask the hand of hisdaughter Dragomir for King Valdemar, the young ruler of thatcountry. Sir Strange[1] Ebbesoen and Bishop Peder Sunesoen were thespokesmen, and many knights, whose fame had travelled far in thelong years of fighting to bring the Baltic pagans under the cross,rode with them. The old king received them with delight. Valdemarwas not only a good son-in-law for a king to have, being himself agreat and renowned ruler, but he was a splendid knight, tall andhandsome, of most courteous bearing, ambitious, manly, and of readywit. So their suit prospered well. The folk-song tells how theyfared; how, according to the custom of those days, Sir Strangewedded the fair princess by proxy for his lord, and how KingOttocar, when he bade her good-by, took this promise of her:

In piety, virtue, and fear of God, Let all thy days be spent; And ever thy subjects be thy thought, Their hopes on thy care be bent.

[Footnote 1: Pronounce as Strangle, with the l left out.]

The daughter kept her vow. Never was queen more beloved of herpeople than Dagmar. That was the name they gave her in Denmark, forthe Bohemian Dragomir was strange to them. Dagmar meant daybreak intheir ancient tongue, and it really seemed as if a new and beautifulday dawned upon the land in her coming. The dry pages of historyhave little enough to tell of her beyond the simple fact of hermarriage and untimely death, though they are filled with her famoushusband's deeds; but not all of his glorious campaigns that earnedfor him the name of "The Victor" have sunk so deep into the people'smemory, or have taken such hold of their hearts, as the lovely queenwho

Came without burden, she came with peace; She came the good peasant to cheer.

Through all the centuries the people have sung her praise, and theysing it yet. Of the many folk-songs that have come down from themiddle ages, those that tell of Queen Dagmar are the sweetest, asthey are the most mournful, for her happiness was as brief as herlife was beautiful.

They sailed homeward over sunny seas, until they came to the shorewhere the royal lover awaited his bride, impatiently scanning thehorizon for the gilded dragon's head of the ship that bore her. Theminstrel sings of the great wedding that was held in the old city ofRibe.[2] The gray old cathedral in which they knelt together stillstands; but of Valdemar's strong castle only a grass-grown hill isleft. It was the privilege of a bride in those days to ask a gift ofher husband on the morning after the wedding, and have it grantedwithout question. Two boons did Dagmar crave,

"right early in the morning, long before it was day":

one, that the plow-tax might be forgiven the peasant, and that thosewho for rising against it had been laid in irons be set free; theother, that the prison door of Bishop Valdemar be opened. BishopValdemar was the arch-enemy of the King. The first request hegranted; but the other he refused for cause:

An' he comes out, Bishop Valdemar, Widow he makes you this year.

And he did his worst; for in the end the King yielded to Dagmar'sprayers, and much mischief came of it.

[Footnote 2: Pronounced Reebe, in two syllables.]

Seven years the good queen lived. Seven centuries have not dimmedthe memory of them, or of her. The King was away in a distant partof the country when they sent to him in haste with the message thatthe queen was dying. The ballad tells of his fears as he seesDagmar's page coming, and they proved only too true.

The king his checker-board shut in haste, The dice they rattled and rung. Forbid it God, who dwells in heaven, That Dagmar should die so young.

In the wild ride over field and moor, the King left his men farbehind:

When the king rode out of Skanderborg Him followed a hundred men. But when he rode o'er Ribe bridge, Then rode the king alone.

The tears of weeping women told him as he thundered over thedrawbridge of the castle that he was too late. But Dagmar had onlyswooned. As he throws himself upon her bed she opens her eyes, andsmiles upon her husband. Her last prayer, as her first, is for mercyand peace. Her sin, she says, is not great; she has done nothingworse than to lace her silken sleeves on a Sunday. Then she closesher eyes with a tired sigh:

The bells of heaven are chiming for me; No more may I stay to speak.

Thus the folk-song. Long before Dagmar went to her rest, BishopValdemar had stirred up all Germany to wreak his vengeance upon theKing. He was an ambitious, unscrupulous priest, who hated his royalmaster because he held himself entitled to the crown, being thenatural son of King Knud, who was murdered at Roskilde, as told inthe story of Absalon. While they were yet young men, when he sawthat the people followed his rival, he set the German princesagainst Denmark, a task he never found hard. But young Valdemar madeshort work of them. He took the strong cities on the Elbe and laidthe lands of his adversaries under the Danish crown. The bishop heseized, and threw him into the dungeon of Soeborg Castle, where hehad sat thirteen years when Dagmar's prayers set him free. He couldhardly walk when he came out, but he could hate, and all the worldknew it. The Pope bound him with heavy oaths never to return toDenmark, and made him come to Italy so that he could keep an eye onhim himself. But two years had not passed before he broke his oath,and fled to Bremen, where the people elected him to the vacantarchbishopric and its great political power. Forthwith he beganplotting against his native land.

In the bitter feud between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines he foundhis opportunity. One of the rival emperors marched an army north tohelp the perjured priest. King Valdemar hastened to meet them, buton the eve of battle the Emperor was slain by one of his own men. OnSunday, when the archbishop was saying mass in the Bremen cathedral,an unknown knight, the visor of whose helmet was closed so that noone saw his face, strode up to the altar, and laying a papal bullbefore him, cried out that he was accursed, and under the ban of thechurch. The people fled, and forsaken by all, the wretched manturned once more to Rome in submission. But though the Pope forgavehim on condition that he meddle no more with politics, war, orepiscopal office, another summer found him wielding sword and lanceagainst the man he hated, this time under the banner of the Guelphs.The Germans had made another onset on Denmark, but again KingValdemar defeated them. The bishop intrenched himself in Hamburg,and made a desperate resistance, but the King carried the city bystorm. The beaten and hopeless man fled, and shut himself up in acloister in Hanover, where daily and nightly he scourged himself forhis sins. If it is true that "hell was fashioned by the souls thathated," not all the penance of all the years must have availed tosave him from the torments of the lost.

Denmark now had peace on its southern border. Dagmar was dead, andValdemar, whose restless soul yearned for new worlds to conquer,turned toward the east where the wild Esthland tribes were guilty ofeven worse outrages than the Wends before Absalon tamed them. Thedreadful cruelties practised by these pagans upon christian captivescried aloud to all civilized Europe, and Valdemar took the cross"for the honor of the Virgin Mary and the absolution of his sins,"and gathered a mighty fleet, the greatest ever assembled in Danishwaters. With more than a thousand ships he sailed across the Baltic.The Pope sped them with his apostolic blessing, and took king andpeople into his especial care, forbidding any one to attack thecountry while they were away converting the heathen. ArchbishopAnders led the crusade with the king. As the fleet approached theshore they saw it covered with an innumerable host of the enemy. Sogreat was their multitude that the crusaders quailed before theperil of landing; but the archbishop put heart into them, and ledthe fleet in fervent prayer to the God of battle. Then they landedwithout hindrance.

There was an old stronghold there called Lyndanissa that had falleninto decay. The crusaders busied themselves for two days withbuilding another and better fort. On the third day, being St. Vitus'Day, they rested, fearing no harm. The Esthlanders had not troubledthem. Some of their chiefs had even come in with an offer ofsurrender. They were willing to be converted, they said, and thepriests were baptizing them after vespers, while the camp was makingready for the night, when suddenly the air was filled with the yellsof countless savages. On every side they broke from the woods, wherethey had been gathering unsuspected, and overwhelmed the camp. Theguards were hewn down, the outposts taken, and the King's men werefalling back in confusion, their standard lost, when Prince Vitislavof Ruegen who had been camping with his men in a hollow between thesand-hills, out of the line of attack, threw himself between themand the Esthlanders, and gave the Danes time to form their lines.

In the twilight of the June evening the battle raged with greatfury. With the King at their head, who had led them to victory on somany hard-fought fields, the Danes drove back their savage foes timeafter time, literally hewing their way through their ranks withsword and battle-axe. But they were hopelessly outnumbered. Theirhearts misgave them as they saw ten heathen spring out of the groundfor every one that was felled. The struggle grew fiercer as nightcame on. The Christians were fighting for life; defeat meant thatthey must perish to a man, by the sword or upon pagan altars; escapethere was none. Upon the cliff overlooking the battle-field thearchbishop and his priests were praying for success to the King'sarms. Tradition that has been busy with this great battle allthrough the ages tells how, while the aged bishop's hands wereraised toward heaven, victory leaned to the Danes; but when he grewtired, and let them fall, the heathen won forward, until the priestsheld up his hands and once more the tide of battle rolled back fromthe shore, and the Christian war-cry rose higher.

Suddenly, in the clash of steel upon steel and the wild tumult ofthe conflict, there arose a great and wondering cry "the banner! thebanner! a miracle!" and Christian and pagan paused to listen. Out ofthe sky, as it seemed, over against the hill upon which the priestsknelt, a blood-red banner with a great white cross was seen fallinginto the ranks of the Christian knights, and a voice resounded overthe battle-field, "Bear this high, and victory shall be yours." Withthe exultant cry, "For God and the King," the crusaders seized it,and charged the foe. Terror-stricken, the Esthlanders wavered, thenturned, and fled. The battle became a massacre. Thousands wereslain. The chronicles say that the dead lay piled fathom-high on thefield that ran red with blood. Upon it, when the pursuit was over,Valdemar knelt with his men, and they bowed their heads inthanksgiving, while the venerable archbishop gave praise to God forthe victory.

That is the story of the Dannebrog which has been the flag of theDanes seven hundred years. Whether the archbishop had brought itwith him intending to present it to King Valdemar, and threw it downamong the fighting hordes in the moment of extreme peril, orwhether, as some think, the Pope himself had sent it to thecrusaders with a happy inspiration, the fact remains that it came tothe Danes in this great battle, and on the very day which, fiftyyears before, had seen the fall of Arcona, and the end ofidol-worship among the western Slavs. Three hundred years thestandard flew over the Danes fighting on land and sea. Then it waslost in a campaign against the Holstein counts and, when recoveredhalf a century later, was hung up in the cathedral at Slesvig,where gradually it fell to pieces. In the first half of theNineteenth Century, when national feeling and national pride were attheir lowest ebb, it was taken down with other moth-eaten oldbanners, one day when they were cleaning up, and somebody made abonfire of them in the street. Such was the fate of "the flag thatfell from heaven," the sacred standard of the Danes. But it was notthe end of it. The Dannebrog flies yet over the Denmark of theValdemars, no longer great as then, it is true, nor master of itsancient foes; but the world salutes it with respect, for there wasnever blot of tyranny or treason upon it, and its sons own it withpride wherever they go.

King Valdemar knighted five and thirty of his brave men on thebattle-field, and from that day the Order of the Dannebrog is saidto date. It bears upon a white crusader's cross the slogan of thegreat fight "For God and the King," and on its reverse the date whenit was won, "June 15, 1219." The back of paganism was broken thatday, and the conversion of all Esthland followed soon. King Valdemarbuilt the castle he had begun before he sailed home, and called itReval, after one of the neighboring tribes. The Russian city of thatname grew up about it and about the church which Archbishop Andersreared. The Dannebrog became its arms, and its people call it tothis day "the city of the Danes."

Denmark was now at the height of her glory. Her flag flew over allthe once hostile lands to the south and east, clear into Russia. TheBaltic was a Danish inland sea. King Valdemar was named "Victor"with cause. His enemies feared him; his people adored him. In asingle night foul treachery laid the whole splendid structure low.The King and young Valdemar, Dagmar's son, with a small suite ofretainers had spent the day hunting on the little island of Lyoe.Count Henrik of Schwerin,--the Black Count they called him,--who hadjust returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was his guest. Thecount hated Valdemar bitterly for some real or fancied injury, buthe hid his hatred under a friendly bearing and smooth speech. Hebrought the King gifts from the Holy Sepulchre, hunted with him, andwas his friend. But by night, when the King and his son slept intheir tent, unguarded, since no enemy was thought to be near, hefell upon them with his cutthroats, bound and gagged them despitetheir struggles, and gathering up all the valuables that lay around,to put the finishing touch upon his villainy, fled with hisprisoners "in great haste and fear," while the King's men slept.When they awoke, and tried to follow, they found their shipsscuttled. The count's boat had been lying under sail all day, hiddenin a sheltered cove, awaiting his summons.

Germany at last had the lion and its whelp in her grasp. In chainsand fetters they were dragged from one dungeon to another. Thetraitors dared not trust them long in any city, however strong. TheGerman Emperor shook his fist at Count Henrik, but secretly he wasglad. He would have liked nothing better than to have the preciousspoil in his own power. The Pope thundered in Rome and hurled hisban at the thugs. But the Black Count's conscience was as swarthy ashis countenance; and besides, had he not just been to the Holy Land,and thereby washed himself clean of all his sins, past and present?

Behind prison walls, comforted only by Dagmar's son, sat the King,growing old and gray with anger and grief. Denmark lay prostrateunder the sudden blow, while her enemies rose on every side. Day byday word came of outbreaks in the conquered provinces. The peopledid not know which way to turn; the strong hand that held the helmwas gone, and the ship drifted, the prey of every ill wind. It wasas if all that had been won by sixty years of victories andsacrifice fell away in one brief season. The forests filled without-laws; neither peasant nor wayfarer, nor yet monk or nun in theirquiet retreat, was safe from outrage; and pirates swarmed again inbay and sound, where for two generations there had been peace. Thetwice-perjured Bishop Valdemar left his cloister cell once more andgirt on the sword, to take the kingdom he coveted by storm.

He was met by King Valdemar's kinsman and friend, Albert ofOrlamunde, who hastened to the frontier with all the men he couldgather. They halted him with a treaty of peace that offered to setValdemar free if he would take his kingdom as a fief of the Germancrown. He, Albert, so it was written, was to keep all his lands andmore, would he but sign it. He did not stop to hear the rest, butslashed the parchment into ribbons with his sword, and ordered aninstant advance. The bishop he made short work of, and he was heardof no more. But in the battle with the German princes Albert wasdefeated and taken prisoner. The door of King Valdemar's dungeon wasopened only to let his friend in.

After two years and a half in chains, Valdemar was ransomed by hispeople with a great sum of gold. The Danish women gave their ringsand their jewels to bring back their king. They flocked about himwhen he returned, and received him like the conqueror of old; but herode among them gray and stern, and his thoughts were far away.

They had made him swear on oath upon the sacrament, and allDenmark's bishops with him, before they set him free, that he wouldnot seek revenge. But once he was back in his own, he sent to PopeGregory, asking him to loose him from an oath wrung from him whilehe was helpless in the power of bandits. And the Pope responded thatto keep faith with traitors was no man's duty. Then back he rodeover the River Eider into the enemy's land--for they had strippedDenmark of all her hard-won possessions south of the ancient borderof the kingdom, except Esthland and Ruegen--and with him went everyman who could bear arms in all the nation. He crushed the BlackCount who tried to block his way, and at Bornhoeved met the Germanallies who had gathered from far and near to give him battle. Wellthey knew that if Valdemar won, the reckoning would be terrible. Allday they fought, and victory seemed to lean toward the Danes, whenthe base Holsteiners, the Danish rear-guard whom the enemy hadbought to betray their king, turned their spears upon his army, anddecided the day. The battle ended in utter rout of Valdemar'sforces. Four thousand Danish men were slain. The King himself fellwounded on the field, his eye pierced by an arrow, and would havefallen into the hands of the enemy once more but for an unknownGerman knight, who took him upon his horse and bore him in the nightover unfrequented paths to Kiel, where he was safe.

"But all men said that this great hurt befell the King because thathe brake the oath he swore upon the sacred body of the Lord."

The wars of Valdemar were over, but his sorrows were not. Four yearslater the crushing blow fell when Dagmar's son, who was crowned kingto succeed him, lost his life while hunting. With him, says thefolk-song, died the hope of Denmark. The King had other sons, but toDagmar's boy the people had given their love from the first, as theyhad to his gentle mother. The old King and his people grievedtogether.

But Valdemar rose above his sorrows. Great as he had been in thedays of victory, he was greater still in adversity. The country wastorn by the wars of three-score years, and in need of rest. He gavehis last days to healing the wounds the sword had struck. Valdemar,the Victor, became Valdemar, the Law-giver. The laws of the countryhad hitherto made themselves. They were the outgrowths of thepeople's ancient customs, passed down by word of mouth through thegenerations, and confirmed on Thing from time to time. KingValdemar gave Denmark her first written laws that judged betweenman and man, in at least one of her provinces clear down into ourday. "With law shall land be built" begins his code. "The law," itsays, "must be honest, just, reasonable, and according to the waysof the people. It must meet their needs, and speak plainly so thatall men may know and understand what the law is. It is not to bemade in any man's favor, but for the needs of all them who live inthe land." That is its purpose, and "no man shall judge (condemn)the law which the King has given and the country chosen; neithershall he (the King) take it back without the will of the people."That tells the story of Valdemar's day, and of the people who are sonear of kin with ourselves. They were not sovereign and subjects;they were a chosen king and a free people, working together "withlaw land to build."

King Valdemar was married twice. The folk-song represents Dagmar asurging the King with her dying breath

"that Bengerd, my lord, that base bad dame you never to wife will take."

Bengerd, or Berengaria, was a Portuguese princess whom Valdemarmarried in spite of the warning, two years later. As the people hadloved the fair Dagmar, so they hated the proud Southern beauty,whether with reason or not. The story of her "morning gift," as ithas come down to us through the mists of time, is very differentfrom the other. She asks the King, so the ballad has it, to give herSamsoe, a great and fertile island, and "a golden crown[3] for everymaid," but he tells her not to be quite so greedy:

There be full many an honest maid with not dry bread to eat.

[Footnote 3: A coin, probably.]

Undismayed, Bengerd objects that Danish women have no business towear silken gowns, and that a good horse is not for a peasant lad.The King replies patiently that what a woman can buy she may wearfor him, and that he will not take the lad's horse if he can feedit. Bengerd is not satisfied. "Let bar the land with iron chains" isher next proposal, that neither man nor woman enter it withoutpaying tax. Her husband says scornfully that Danish kings have neverhad need of such measures, and never will. He is plainly gettingbored, and when she keeps it up, and begrudges the husbandman morethan "two oxen and a cow," he loses his temper, and presumably thereis a matrimonial tiff. Very likely most of this is fiction, bred ofthe popular prejudice. The King loved her, that is certain. She wasa beautiful high-spirited woman, so beautiful that many hundreds ofyears after, when her grave was opened, the delicate oval of herskull excited admiration yet. But the people hated her. Twentygenerations after her death it was their custom when passing hergrave to spit on it with the exclamation "Out upon thee, Bengerd!God bless the King of Denmark"; for in good or evil days they neverwavered in their love and admiration for the king who was a son ofthe first Valdemar, and the heir of his greatness and of that of thesainted Absalon. Tradition has it that Bengerd was killed in battle,having gone with her husband on one of his campaigns. "It was notheard in any place," says the folk-song wickedly, "that any onegrieved for her." But the King mourned for his beautiful queen tothe end of his days.

Bengerd bore Valdemar three sons upon whom he lavished all theaffection of his lonely old age. Erik he chose as his successor, andto keep his brothers loyal to him he gave them great fiefs and thus,unknowing, brought on the very trouble he sought to avoid, and sethis foot on the path that led to Denmark's dismemberment aftercenturies of bloody wars. For to his second son Abel he gaveSlesvig, and Abel, when his brother became king, sought alliancewith the Holstein count Adolf,[4] the very one who had led theGermans at the fatal battle of Bornhoeved. The result was a warbetween the brothers that raged seven years, and laid waste theland. Worse was to follow, for Abel was only "Abel in name, but Cainin deed." But happily the old King's eyes were closed then, and hewas spared the sight of one brother murdering the other for thekingdom.

[Footnote 4: That was the beginning of the Slesvig-Holstein questionthat troubled Europe to our day; for the fashion set by Abel otherrulers of his dukedom followed, and by degrees Slesvig came to bereckoned with the German duchies, whereas up till then it had alwaysbeen South-Jutland, a part of Denmark proper.]

Some foreboding of this seems to have troubled him in his lastyears. It is related that once when he was mounting his horse to gohunting he fell into a deep reverie, and remained standing with hisfoot in the stirrup a long time, while his men wondered, not daringto disturb him. At last one of them went to remind him that the sunwas low in the west. The King awoke from his dream, and bade him goat once to a wise old hermit who lived in a distant part of thecountry. "Ask him," he said, "what King Valdemar was thinking ofjust now, and bring me his answer." The knight went away on hisstrange errand, and found the hermit. And this was the message hebrought back: "Your lord and master pondered as he stood by hishorse, how his sons would fare when he was dead. Tell him that warand discord they shall have, but kings they will all be." When theKing heard the prophecy he was troubled in mind, and called his sonsand all his great knights to a council at which he pleaded with themto keep the peace. But though they promised, he was barely in hisgrave when riot and bloodshed filled the land. The climax wasreached when Abel inveigled his brother to his home with fair wordsand, once he had him in his power, seized him and gave him over tohis men to do with "as they pleased." They understood their masteronly too well, and took King Erik out on the fjord in an open boat,and killed him there, scarce giving him time to say his prayers.They weighted his body with his helmet, and sank it in the deep.

Abel made oath with four and twenty of his men that he was innocentof his brother's blood, and took the crown after him. But the foulcrime was soon avenged. Within a few years he was himself slain by apeasant in a rising of his own people. For a while his body layunburied, the prey of beast and bird, and when it was interred inthe Slesvig cathedral there was no rest for it. "Such turmoil arosein the church by night that the monks could not chant their vigils,"and in the end they took him out, and buried him in a swamp, with astake driven through the heart to lay his ghost. But clear down toour time when people ceased to believe in ghosts, the fratricide wasseen at night hunting through the woods, coal-black and on a whitehorse, with three fiery dogs trailing after; and blue flames burnedover the sea where they vanished. That was how the superstition ofthe people judged the man whom the nobles and the priests madeking, red-handed.

Christopher, the youngest of the three brothers, was king last. Hisend was no better than that of the rest. Indeed, it was worse.Hardly yet forty years old, he died--poisoned, it was said, by theAbbot Arnfast, in the sacrament as he knelt at the altar-rail in theRibe cathedral. He was buried in the chancel where the penitentsgoing to the altar walk over his grave. So, of all Valdemar's foursons, not one died a peaceful, natural death. But kings they allwere.

Valdemar was laid in Ringsted with his great father. He sleepsbetween his two queens. Dagmar's grave was disturbed in the latemiddle ages by unknown vandals, and the remains of Denmark'sbest-loved queen were scattered. Only a golden cross, which she hadworn in life, somehow escaped, and found its way in course of timeinto the museum of antiquities at Copenhagen, where it now is, itschief and priceless treasure. There also is a braid of QueenBengerd's hair that was found when her grave was opened in 1855. Thepeople's hate had followed her even there, and would not let herrest. The slab that covered her tomb had been pried off, and a roundstone dropped into the place made for her head. Otherwise her gravewas undisturbed.

"Truly then fell the crown from the heads of Danish men," says theold chronicle of King Valdemar's death, and black clouds weregathering ominously even then over the land. But in storm andstress, as in days that were fair, the Danish people have clungloyally to the memory of their beloved King and of his sweet Dagmar.

HOW THE GHOST OF THE HEATH WAS LAID

On the map of Europe the mainland of Denmark looks like a beckoningfinger pointing due north and ending in a narrow sand-reef, uponwhich the waves of the North Sea and of the Kattegat break withunceasing clamor and strife. The heart of the peninsula, quiteone-fourth of its area, was fifty years ago a desert, a barren,melancholy waste, where the only sign of life encountered by thehunter, gunning for heath-fowl and plover, was a rare shepherdtending a few lonesome sheep, and knitting mechanically on hisendless stocking. The two, the lean sheep and the long stocking,together comprised the only industries which the heath afforded andwas thought capable of sustaining. A great change has taken placewithin the span of a single life, and it is all due to the clearsight and patient devotion of one strong man, the Gifford Pinchot ofDenmark. The story of that unique achievement reads like the taleof the Sleeping Beauty who was roused from her hundred years' sleepby the kiss of her lover prince. The prince who awoke the slumberingheath was a captain of engineers, Enrico Dalgas by name.

Not altogether fanciful is the conceit. Barren, black, and desolate,the great moor gripped the imagination as no smiling landscape offield and forest could--does yet, where enough of it remains. Far aseye reaches the dun heather covers hill and plain with its sombrepall. Like gloomy sentinels, furry cattails nod in the bog where theblue gentian peeps timidly into murky pools; the only humanhabitation in sight some heath boer's ling-thatched hut, flanked byrows of peat stacks in vain endeavor to stay the sweep of thepitiless west wind. On the barrows where the vikings sleep theirlong sleep, the plover pipes its melancholy lay; between steep banksa furtive brook steals swiftly by as if anxious to escape from theuniversal blight. Over it all broods the silence of the desert,drowsy with the hum of many bees winging their swift way to thesecret feeding-places they know of, where mayflower and anemone hideunder the heather, witness that forests grew here in the long ago.In midsummer, when the purple is on the broom, a strange pageantmoves on the dim horizon, a shifting mirage of sea and shore,forest, lake, and islands lying high, with ships and castles andspires of distant churches--the witchery of the heath that speaks inthe tales and superstitions of its simple people. High in the bluesoars the lark, singing its song of home and hope to its nestingmate. This is the heath which, denying to the hardest toil all butthe barest living, has given of its poetry to the Danish tongue someof its sweetest songs.

But in this busy world day-dreams must make way for the things thatmake the day count, castles in the air to homes upon the soil. Theheath had known such in the dim past. It had not always been adesert. The numberless cairns that lie scattered over it, sometimesstrung out for miles as if marking the highways of the ancients,which they doubtless do, sometimes grouped where their villagesstood, bear witness to it. Great battles account for their share,and some of them were fought in historic times. On Grathe Heath theyoung King Valdemar overcame his treacherous rival Svend. Alone andhunted, the beaten man sought refuge, Saxo tells us, behind a stump,where he was found and slain by one of the King's axemen. A chapelwas built on the spot. More than seven centuries later (in 1892)they dug there, and found the bones of a man with skull split intwo.

The stump behind which the wretched Svend hid was probably the lastrepresentative of great forests that grew where now is sterile moor.In the bogs trunks of oak and fir are found lying as they fellcenturies ago. The local names preserve the tradition, with here andthere patches of scrub oak that hug the ground close, to escape theblast from the North Sea. There is one such thicket near the hamletof Taulund--the name itself tells of long-forgotten groves--and thestory runs among the people yet that once squirrels jumped from treeto tree without touching ground all the way from Taulund toGjellerup church, a stretch of more than five miles to which thewild things of the woods have long been strangers. In the shelter ofthe old forests men dwelt through ages, and made the land yield thema living. Some cairns that have been explored span over more than athousand years. They were built in the stone age, and served thepeople of the bronze and iron ages successively as burial-places,doubtless the same tribes who thus occupied their homesteads fromgeneration to generation. That they were farmers, not nomads, isproved by the clear impression of grains of wheat and barley intheir burial urns. The seeds strayed into the clay and were burnedaway, but the impression abides, and tells the story.

Clear down to historic times there was a thrifty population in manyof the now barren spots. But a change was slowly creeping over thelandscape. The country was torn by long and bloody wars. The big menfought for the land and the little ones paid the score, as theyalways do. They were hunted from house and home. Next the wildhordes of the Holstein counts overran Jutland. Its towns wereburned, the country laid waste. Great fires swept the forests. Whatravaging armies had left was burned in the smelteries. In the sandycrust of the heath there is iron, and swords and spears were thegrim need of that day. The smelteries are only names now. Theywent, but they took the forests with them, and where the ground wascleared the west wind broke through, and ruin followed fast. Last ofall came the Black Death, and set its seal of desolation upon itall. When it had passed, the country was a huge graveyard. The heathhad moved in. Rovers and smugglers found refuge there; honest folkshunned it. Under the heather the old landmarks are sometimes foundyet, and deep ruts made by wheels that long since ceased to turn.

In the Eighteenth Century men began to think of reclamation. Athousand German colonists were called in and settled on the heath,but it was stronger than they, and they drifted away until scarcehalf a hundred families remained. The Government tried its hand, butthere was no one who knew just how, and only discouragementresulted. Then came the war with Germany in 1864, that lost toDenmark a third of her territory. The country lay prostrate underthe crushing blow. But it rose above defeat and disaster, and oncemore expectant eyes were turned toward the ancient domain that hadslipped from its grasp. "What was lost without must be won within"became the national slogan. And this time the man for the task wasat hand.

Enrico Mylius Dalgas was by the accident of birth an Italian, hisfather being the Danish consul in Naples; by descent a Frenchman; bychoice and training a Dane, typical of the best in that people. Hecame of the Huguenot stock that left France after the repeal of theEdict of Nantes in 1685 and scattered over Europe, to the great goodof every land in which it settled. They had been tillers of the soilfrom the beginning, and at least two of the family, who found homesin Denmark, made in their day notable contributions to the cause ofadvanced, sensible husbandry. Enrico's father, though a merchant,had an open eye for the interests which in later years claimed theson's life-work. In the diary of a journey through Sweden he makesindignant comment upon the reckless way in which the people of thatcountry dealt with their forests. That he was also a man ofresolution is shown by an incident of the time when Jew-baiting washaving its sorry day in Denmark. An innkeeper mistook thedark-skinned little man for a Jew, and set before him a spoiledham, retorting contemptuously, when protest was made, that it was"good enough for a Sheeny." Without further parley Mr. Dalgas seizedthe hot ham by its shank and beat the fellow with it till he criedfor mercy. The son tells of the first school he attended, when hewas but five years old. It was kept by the widow of one ofNapoleon's generals, a militant lady who every morning marshalledthe school, a Lilliputian army with the teachers flanking the linelike beardless sergeants in stays and petticoats, and distributedrewards and punishments as the great Emperor was wont to do after abattle. For the dunces there was a corner strewn with dried peas onwhich they were made to kneel with long-eared donkey caps adorningtheir luckless heads. Very likely it was after an insult of thiskind that Enrico decided to elope to America with his baby sister.They were found down by the harbor bargaining with some fishermen totake them over to Capri _en route_ for the land of freedom. Theelder Dalgas died while the children were yet little, and the widowwent back to Denmark to bring up her boys there.

They were poor, and the change from the genial skies of sunny Italyto the bleak North did not make it any easier for them. Enrico'steacher saw it, and gave him his overcoat to be made over. But theboys spotted it and squared accounts with their teacher bysnowballing the wearer of the big green plaid until he was glad toleave it at home, and go without. He was in the military school whenwar broke out with Germany in 1848. Both of his brothersvolunteered, and fell in battle. Enrico was ordered out aslieutenant, and put on the shoulder-straps joyfully, to the greatscandal of his godfather in Milan, who sympathized with the Germancause. When the young soldier refused to resign he not only cut himoff in his will, but took away a pension of four hundred kroner hehad given his mother in her widowhood. If he had thoughts ofbringing them over by such means, he found out his mistake. Motherand son were made of sterner stuff. Dalgas fought twice for hiscountry, the last time in 1864, as a captain of engineers.

It was no ordinary class, the one of 1851 that resumed its studiesin the military high school. Two of the students did not answerroll-call; their names were written among the nation's heroic dead.Some had scars and wore the cross for valor in battle. All werefirst lieutenants, to be graduated as captains. Dalgas had himselftransferred from the artillery to the engineers, and was detailed asroad inspector. So the opportunity of his life came to him.

There were few railways in those days; the highways were still thegreat arteries of traffic. Dalgas built roads that crossed theheath, and he learned to know it and the strong and independent, ifnarrow, people who clung to it with such a tenacious grip. He had anatural liking for practical geology and for the chemistry of thesoil, and the deep cuts which his roads sometimes made gave him thebest of chances for following his bent. The heath lay as an openbook before him, and he studied it with delight. He found the tracesof the old forests, and noted their extent. Occasionally the pickaxeuncovered peat deposits of unsuspected depth and value. Sometimesthe line led across the lean fields, and damages had to be discussedand assessed. He learned the point of view of the heath farmer,sympathized with his struggles, and gained his confidence. Best ofall, he found a man of his own mind, a lawyer by the name ofMorville, himself a descendant of the exiled Huguenots. It is not alittle curious that when the way was cleared for the Heath Society'sgreat work, in its formal organization with M. Mourier-Petersen, alarge landowner, as their associate in its management, the three menwho for a quarter of a century planned the work and marked out thegroove in which it was to run were all of that strong stock which isby no means the most common in Denmark.

With his lawyer friend Captain Dalgas tramped the heath far and widefor ten years. Then their talks had matured a plan. Dalgas wrote tothe Copenhagen newspapers that the heath could be reclaimed, andsuggested that it should be done by the State. They laughed at him."Nothing better could have happened," he said in after years, "forit made us turn to the people themselves, and that was the road tosuccess, though we did not know it." In the spring of 1866 a hundredmen, little and big landowners most of them, met at his call, andorganized the Heath Society[1] with the object of reclaiming themoor. Dalgas became its managing director.

[Footnote 1: Danske Hedeselskab.]

To restore to the treeless waste its forest growth was thefundamental idea, for until that was done nothing but the heathercould grow there. The west wind would not let it. But the heathfarmer shook his head. It would cost too much, and give too littleback. What he needed was water and marl. Could the captain help themto these?--that was another matter. The little streams that foundtheir way into the heath and lost it there, dire need had taughtthem to turn to use in their fields; not a drop escaped. But theriver that ran between deep banks was beyond their reach. Could heshow them how to harness that? Dalgas saw their point. "We areworking, not for the dead soil, but for the living men who findhomes upon it," he told his associates, and tree planting was putaside for the time. They turned canal diggers instead. Irrigationbecame their aim and task; the engineer was in his right place. Thewater was raised from the stream and led out upon the moor, andpresently grass grew in the sand which the wiry stems of the heatherhad clutched so long. Green meadows lined the water-runs, andfragrant haystacks rose. To the lean sheep was added a cow, thentwo. The farmer laid by a little, and took in more land forcultivation. That meant breaking the heath. Also, it meant marl. Theheath is lime-poor; marl is lime in the exact form in which it bestfits that sandy soil. It was known to exist in some favored spots,but the poor heath farmer could not bring it from a distance. So themarl borer went with the canal digger. Into every acre he drove hisauger, and mapped out his discoveries. At last accounts he had foundmarl in more than seventeen hundred places, and he is not done yet.Where there was none, Dalgas's Society built portable railways intothe moor far enough to bring it to nearly every farmer's door.

It was as if a magic wand had been waved over the heath. With waterand marl, the means were at hand for fighting it and winning out.Heads that had drooped in discouragement were raised. The cattlekeep increased, and with it came the farmer's wealth. Marl changesthe character of the heath soil; with manure to fertilize it therewas no reason why it should not grow crops--none, except thewithering blast of the west wind. The time for Dalgas to preach treeplanting had come.

While the canal digger and marl seeker were at work, there had beenneighborhood meetings and talks at which Captain Dalgas did thetalking. When he spoke the heath boer listened, for he had learnedto look upon him as one of them. He wore no gold lace. A plain manin every-day gray tweeds, with his trousers tucked into his boots,he spoke to plain people of things that concerned them vitally, andin a way they could understand. So when he told them that the heathhad once been forest-clad, at least a large part of it, and pointedthem to the proofs, and that the woods could be made to grow againto give them timber and shelter and crops, they gave heed. It wasworth trying at any rate. The shelter was the immediate thing. Theybegan planting hedges about their homesteads; not always wisely, forit is not every tree that will grow in the heath. The wind whippedand wore them, the ahl cramped their roots, and they died. The ahlis the rusty-red crust that forms under the heather in the course ofthe ages where the desert rules. Sometimes it is a loose sandstoneformation; sometimes it carries as much as twenty per cent of ironthat is absorbed from the upper layers of the sand. In any case, itmust be broken through; no tree root can do it. The ahl, the povertyof the sand, and the wind, together make the "evil genius" of theheath that had won until then in the century-old fight with man. Butthis time he had backing, and was not minded to give up. The HeathSociety was there to counsel, to aid. And soon the hedges took hold,and gardens grew in their shelter. There is hardly a farm in allwest Jutland to-day that has not one, even if the moor waits justbeyond the gate.

Out in the desert the Society had made a beginning with plantationsof Norway spruce. They took root, but the heather soon overwhelmedthe young plants. Not without a fight would this enemy let go itsgrip upon the land. It had smothered the hardy Scotch pine in dayspast, and now the spruce was in peril. Searching high and low forsomething that would grow fast and grow green, Dalgas and hisassociates planted dwarf pine with the spruce. Strangely, it notonly grew itself, but proved to be a real nurse for the other. Thespruce took a fresh start, and they grew vigorously together--for awhile. Then the pine outstripped its nursling, and threatened tosmother it. The spruce was the more valuable; the other was at bestlittle more than a shrub. The croaker raised his voice: the blackheath had turned green, but it was still heath, of no value to anyone, then or ever.

He had not reckoned with Dalgas. The captain of engineers could usethe axe as well as the spade. He cut the dwarf pine out wherever thespruce had got its grip, and gave it light and air. And it grew bigand beautiful. The Heath Society has now over nineteen hundredplantations that cover nearly a hundred thousand acres, and theState and private individuals, inspired by the example it set, haveplanted almost as large an area. The ghost of the heath has beenlaid for all time.

Go now across the heath and see the change forty years have wrought.You shall seek in vain the lonely shepherd with his stocking. Thestocking has grown into an organized industry. In grandfather's daythe farmer and his household "knitted for the taxes"; if all handsmade enough in the twelvemonth to pay the tax-gatherer, they haddone well. Last year the single county of Hammerum, of which morebelow, sold machine-made underwear to the value of over a millionand a half kroner. The sheep are there, but no longer lean; no morethe ling-thatched hut, but prosperous farms backed by thriftygroves, with hollyhock and marigold in the dooryards, heaps of graymarl in the fields, tiny rivulets of water singing the doom of theheath in the sand; for where it comes the heather moves out. Aresolute, thrifty peasantry looks hopefully forward. Not all of theheath is conquered yet. Roughly speaking, thirty-three hundredsquare miles of heath confronted Dalgas in 1866. Just about athousand remain for those who come after to wrestle with; butalready voices are raised pleading that some of it be preserveduntouched for its natural beauty, while yet it is time.

Meanwhile the plow goes over fresh acres every year--once, twice,then a deeper plowing, this time to break the stony crust, and theheath is ready for its human mission. From the Society's nurseriesthat are scattered through the country come thousands of tinytrees, and are set out in the furrows, two of the spruce for eachdwarf pine till the nurse has done her work. Then she is turned intocharcoal, into tar, and a score of other things of use. The men whodo the planting in summer find chopping to do in winter in the olderplantations, at good wages. Money is flowing into the moor in thewake of the water and the marl. Roads are being made, and every daythe mail-carrier comes. In the olden time a stranger straying intothe heath often brought the first news of the world without forweeks together. Game is coming, too,--roebuck and deer,--in theyoung forests. The climate itself is changing; more rain falls inmidsummer, when it is needed. The sand-blast has been checked, thepower of the west wind broken. The shrivelled soil once more takesup and holds the rains, and the streams will deepen, fish leap inthem as of yore. Groves of beech and oak are springing up in theshelter of their hardier evergreen kin. "Make the land furry,"Dalgas said, with prophetic eye beholding great forests taking theplace of sand and heather, and in his lifetime the change waswrought that is transforming the barren moor into the home-land ofa prosperous people.

To the most unlikely of places, through the very prison doors, hisgospel of hope has made its way. For the last dozen years the lifeprisoners in the Horsens penitentiary have been employed in breakingand reforesting the heath, and their keepers report that the effectupon them of the hard work in the open has been to notably cheer andbrighten them. The discipline has been excellent. There have beenfew attempts at escape, and they have come to nothing through thevigilance of the other prisoners.

While the population in the rest of Denmark is about stationary, inwest Jutland it grows apace. The case of Skaphus farm in the parishof Sunds shows how this happens. Prior to 1870 this farm of threethousand acres was rated the "biggest and poorest" in Denmark. Lastyear it had dwindled to three hundred and fifty acres, but upon itsold land thirty-three homesteads had risen that kept between themsixty-two horses and two hundred and fifty-two cows, beside thesheep, and the manor farm was worth twice as much as before. Thetown of Herning, sometimes called "the Star of the Heath," is theseat of Hammerum county, once the baldest and most miserable on theDanish mainland. In 1841 twenty-one persons lived in Herning. To-daythere are more than six thousand in a town with handsome buildings,gas, electric lighting, and paved streets. The heath is half a dozenmiles away. And this is not the result of any special or forcedindustry, but the natural, healthy growth of a centre for an army ofindustrious men and women winning back the land of their fathers bypatient toil. All through the landscape one sees from the train theblack giving way to the green. Churches rear their white gables;bells that have been silent since the Black Death stalked throughthe land once more call the people to worship on the old sites. Morechurches were built in the reign of "the good King Christian," whohas just been gathered to his fathers, than in all the centuriessince the day of the Valdemars.

Bog cultivation is the Heath Society's youngest child. The heath isfull of peat-bogs that only need the sand, so plentiful on theuplands, to make their soil as good as the best, the muck of the bogbeing all plant food, and they have a surplus of water to give inexchange. With hope the keynote of it all, the State has taken upthe herculean task of keeping down the moving sands of the North Seacoast. All along it is a range of dunes that in the fierce storms ofthat region may change shape and place in a single night. The "sandflight" at times reached miles inland, and threatened to bury thefarmer's acres past recovery. Austrian fir and dwarf pine now growupon the white range, helping alike to keep down the sand and to barout the blast.

With this exception, the great change has been, is being, wrought bythe people themselves. It was for their good, in the apathy thatfollowed 1864, that it should be so, and Dalgas saw it. The Stateaids the man who plants ten acres or more, and assumes theobligation to preserve the forest intact; the Heath Society sellshim plants at half-price, and helps him with its advice. It disposesannually of over thirteen million young trees. The people do therest, and back the Society with their support. The Danish peasanthas learned the value of cooeperation since he turned dairy farmer,and associations for irrigation, for tree planting, and gardenplanting are everywhere. They even reach across the ocean. This yeara call was issued to sons of the old soil, who have found a new homein America, to join in planting a Danish-American forest in thedesert where hill and heather hide a silvery lake in their deepshadows and returning wanderers may rest and dream of the long ago.

Soldier though he was, Enrico Dalgas's pick and spade brigade wongreater victories for Denmark than her armies in two wars. Heliterally "won for his country within what she had lost without." Anatural organizer, a hard worker who found his greatest joy in hisdaily tasks, a fearless and lucid writer who yet knew how to keephis cause out of the rancorous politics that often enough seemed tomistake partisanship for patriotism, he was the most modest of men.Praise he always passed up to others. At the "silver wedding" of theSociety he founded they toasted him jubilantly, but he sat quiet along time. When at last he arose, it was to make this characteristiclittle speech:

"I thank you very much. His Excellency the Minister of the Interior,who is present here, will see from this how much you think of me,and possibly my recommendation that the State make a largercontribution to the Heath Society's treasury may thereby acquiregreater weight with him. I drink to an increased appropriation."

On the heath Dalgas was prophet, prince, and friend of the people.In the crowds that flocked about his bier homespun elbowed gold lacein the grief of a common loss. Boughs of the fragrant spruce deckedhis coffin, the gift of the heath to the memory of him who set itfree.

To Dalgas apply the words of the seer with which he himselfcharacterized the Society that was the child of his heart and brain:"The good men are those who plant and water," for they add to thehappiness of mankind.

KING CHRISTIAN IV

[Illustration: Musical notation with lyrics]

_Maestoso_.

King Christian stood by loft-y mast In mist and smoke; His sword was ham-mer-ing so fast, Thro' Goth-ic helm and brain it passed; Then sank each hos-tile hulk and mast. In mist and smoke. "Fly," shout-ed they, "fly, he who can! Who braves of Denmark's Christ-i-an, Who braves of Denmark's Christian The stroke?"

Deep in the beech-woods between Copenhagen and Elsinore, upon theshore of a limpid lake, stands Frederiksborg, one of the mostbeautiful castles in Europe. In its chapel the Danish kings werecrowned for two centuries, and here was born on April 12, 1577, KingChristian of the Danish national hymn which Longfellow translatedinto our tongue. No Danish ruler since the days of the greatValdemars made such a mark upon his time; none lives as he in theimagination of the people. He led armies to war and won and lostbattles; indeed, he lost more than he won on land when matchedagainst the great generals of that fighting era. On the sea hesailed his own ship and was the captain of his own fleet, and therehe had no peer. He made laws in the days of peace and reigned over ahappy, prosperous land. In his old age misfortune in which he had noshare overwhelmed Denmark, but he was ever greatest in adversity,and his courage saved the country from ruin. The great did not lovehim overmuch; but to the plain people he was ever, with all hisfailings, which were the failings of his day, a great, appealingfigure, and lives in their hearts, not merely in the dry pages ofmusty books.

He was eleven years old when his father died, and until he came ofage the country was governed by a council of happily most able menwho, with his mother, gave him such a schooling as few kings havehad. He not only became proficient in the languages, living anddead, and in mathematics which he put to such practical use that hewas among the greatest of architects and ship-builders; he was thebest all-round athlete among his fellows as well, and there was somesense in the tradition that survives to this day that whoever wastouched by him in wrath did not live long, for he was very tall witha big, strong body, and when he struck, he struck hard. He was adauntless sailor who knew as much about sailing a ship as any one ofhis captains, and much more about building it. Danger appealed tohim always. When the spire on the great cathedral in Copenhagenthreatened to fall, he was the one who went up in it alone and gaveorders where and how to brace it.

As he grew, he sat in the council of state, learning kingcraft, andshowed there the hard-headed sense of fairness and justice that wentwith him through life. He was hardly fourteen when the case of threebrothers of the powerful Friis family came before the council. Theyhad attacked another young nobleman in the street, struck off one ofhis hands, and crippled the other. Because of their influence, thecouncil was for being lenient, atrocious as the crime was. A finewas deemed sufficient. The young prince asked if there were not somelaw covering the case with severer punishment, and was told that inthe province of Skaane there was such a law that applied to serfs.But the assault had not been committed in Skaane, and these werehigh noblemen.

"All the worse for them," said the prince. "Is then a serf in Skaaneto have more rights under the law than a nobleman in the rest ofDenmark? Let the law for the serf be theirs." And the judgmentstood.

He had barely attained his majority, when the young king was calledupon to judge between another great noble and a widow whom he suedfor 9000 daler, money he claimed to have lent to her husband. Inproof he laid before the judges two bonds bearing the signatures ofhusband and wife. The widow denounced them as forgeries, but thecourt decided that she must pay. She went straight to the King withher story, assuring him that she had never heard of the debt. TheKing sent for the bonds and upon close scrutiny discovered that oneof them was on paper bearing the water-mark of a mill that was notbuilt till two years after the date written in the bond. The noblewas arrested and the search of his house brought to light severalsimilar documents waiting their turn. He went to the scaffold. Hisrank only aggravated his offence in the eyes of the King. No wonderthe fame of this judge spread quickly through the land.

A dozen contented years he reigned in peace, doing justice betweenman and man at home. Then the curse of his house gripped him. In twocenturies, since the brief union between the three Scandinaviankingdoms was broken by the secession of Sweden, only two of sixteenkings in either country had gone to their rest without ripping upthe old feud. It was now Christian's turn. The pretext was of littleaccount: there was always cause enough. Gustav Adolf, whose fatherwas then on the throne of Sweden, said in after years that there wasno one he had such hearty admiration for and whose friend he wouldlike so well to be as Christian IV: "The mischief is that we areneighbors." King Christian crossed over into Sweden and laid siegeto the strong fortress of Kalmar where he first saw actual war andshowed himself a doughty campaigner of intrepid courage. It camenear costing him his life when a cannoneer with whom he had oftentalked on his rounds deserted to the enemy and picked the King outas his especial target. Twice he killed an officer attending uponhim, but the King he never hit. It is almost a pleasure to recordthat when he tried it again, in another fight, Christian caught himand dealt with him as the traitor he was, though the rough justiceof those days is not pleasant to dwell on. The besieged tried tocreate a diversion by sneaking into camp at night and burying waximages of the King and his generals in the earth, where they wereafterwards found and spread consternation through the army; for suchthings were believed to be wrought by witchcraft and to bring badluck to those whom they represented.

However, neither the real courage of the defenders, nor theirdallying with the black art, helped them any. King Christian stormedthe town at the head of his army and took it. The burgomaster hid inthe church, disguised as a priest, and pretended to be shriving somewomen when the crash came, but it did not save him. When theSwedish king came with a host twice the size of his own, there wasa battle royal, but Christian drove him off and laid siege to thecastle where dissension presently arose between the garrison and itscommander who was for surrendering. In the midst of their noisyquarrel, King Christian was discovered standing upon the wall,calmly looking on. He had climbed up alone on a rope ladder whichthe sentinel let down at his bidding. At the sight they gave it upand opened the gates, and the King wrote home, proudly dating hisletter from "our castle Kalmar."

Its loss so angered the Swedish king who was old and sick, that hechallenged Christian to single combat, without armor. The lettersthat passed between them were hardly kingly. King Christian wrotethat he had other things to do: "Better catch a doctor, old man, andhave your head-piece looked after." Helpless anger killed Karl, andGustav Adolf, of whom the world was presently to hear, took thecommand and the crown. After that Christian had a harder road tohoe.

A foretaste of it came to him when he tried to surprise the fortressof Gullberg near the present Goetaborg. Its commander was woundedearly in the fight, but his wife who took his place more than filledit. She and her women poured boiling lye upon the attacking Danesuntil they lay "like scalded pigs" under the walls. Their leaderknew when he had enough and made off in haste, with the ladycommandant calling after him, "You were a little unexpected forbreakfast, but come back for dinner and we will receive youproperly." She would not even let them take their dead away. "SinceGod gave us luck to kill them," she said, "we will manage to burythem too." They were very pious days after their own fashion, andGod was much on the lips of his servants. Troubles rarely comesingly. Soon after, King Christian met the enemy unexpectedly andwas so badly beaten that for the second time he had to run for it,though he held out till nearly all his men had fallen. His horse gotmired in a swamp with the pursuers close behind. The gay and wealthySir Christen Barnekow, who had been last on the field, passed himthere, and at once got down and gave him his horse. It meant givingup his life, and when Sir Christen could no longer follow thefleeing King he sat down on a rock with the words, "I give the Kingmy horse, the enemy my life, and God my soul." The rock is there yetand the country folk believe that the red spots in the granite areChristen Barnekow's blood which all the years have not availed towash out.

They tired of fighting at last and made it up. Sweden paid Denmark amillion daler; for the rest, things stayed as they had been before.King Christian had shown himself no mean fighter, but the senselesssacking and burning of town and country that was an ugly part ofthose days' warfare went against his grain, and he tried to persuadethe Swedes to agree to leave that out in future. Gustav Adolf hadnot yet grown into the man he afterward became. "As to the burning,"was his reply, "seeing that it is the usage of war, and we enemies,why we will each have to do the best we can," which meant the worst.Had the two kings, who had much in common, got together in the yearsof peace that followed, much misery might have been saved Denmark,and a black page of history might read very differently. For thosewere the days of the Thirty Years' War, in which together theymight have dictated peace to harassed Europe.

Now King Christian's ambition, his piety, for he was a sincerelyreligious man, as well as his jealousy of his younger rival and ofthe growing power of Sweden--so mixed are human motives--made himyield to the entreaties of the hard-pressed Protestant princes totake up alone their cause against the German Emperor. He had triedfor half a dozen years to make peace between them. At last he drewthe sword and went down to force it. After a year of fighting Tillyand Wallenstein, the Emperor's great generals, he met the former ina decisive battle at Lutter-am-Baremberg. King Christian's army wasbeaten and put to rout. He himself fled bareheaded through theforests of the Hartz Mountains, pursued by the enemy's horsemen. Itwas hardly necessary for the Emperor to make him promise as theprice of peace to keep out of German affairs thenceforth. His allieshad left him to fight it out alone. All their fine speeches went fornothing when it came to the test, and King Christian rode back toDenmark, a sadder and wiser man. It was left to Gustav Adolf, afterall, to teach the German generals the lesson they needed.

In the years of peace before that unhappy war, Danish trade andDanish culture had blossomed exceedingly, thanks to the wisdom, theclever management, and untiring industry of the King. He builtfactories, cloth-mills, silk-mills, paper-mills, dammed the NorthSea out from the rich marshlands with great dikes, taught thefarmers profitable ways of tilling their fields; for he was awondrous manager for whom nothing was too little and nothing toobig. He kept minute account of his children's socks and littleshirts, and found ways of providing money for his war-ships and forcountless building schemes he had in hand both in Denmark andNorway. For many of them he himself drew the plans. Wherever onegoes to this day, his monogram, which heads this story, stares athim from the splendid buildings he erected. The Bourse in Copenhagenand the Round Tower, the beautiful palace of Rosenborg, a sort ofminiature of his beloved Frederiksborg which also he rebuilt on amore magnificent scale--these are among his works which everytraveller in the North knows. He built more cities and strongholdsthan those who went before or came after him for centuries.Christiania and Christiansand in Norway bear his name. He laid out awhole quarter of Copenhagen for his sailors, and the quaint littlehouses still serve that purpose. Regentsen, a dormitory for poorstudents at the university, was built by him. He created seven newchairs of learning and saw to it that all the professors got betterpay. He ferreted out and dismissed in disgrace all the graftingofficials in Norway, and administered justice with an even hand. Atthe same time he burned witches without end, or let it be done fortheir souls' sake. That was the way of his time; and when he neededfireworks for his son's wedding (he made them himself, too), he sentaround to all the old cloisters and cathedral churches for the oldparchments they had. Heaven only knows what treasures that can neverbe replaced went up in fire and smoke for that one night's fun.

King Christian founded a score of big trading companies to exploitthe East, taking care that their ships should have their bulwarkspierced for at least six guns, so that they might serve as war-shipsin time of need. He sent one expedition after another to the watersof Greenland in search of the Northwest Passage. It was on thefourth of these, in 1619, that Jens Munk with two ships andsixty-four sailors was caught in the ice of Hudson Bay and compelledto winter there. One after another the crew died of hunger andscurvy. When Jens Munk himself crept out from what he had thoughthis death-bed, he found only two of them all alive. Together theyburrowed in the snow, digging for roots until spring came when theymanaged to make their way down to Bergen in the smallest of the twovessels. Jens Munk had deserved a better end than he got. He spunhis yarns so persistently at court that he got to be a tiresomebore, and at last one day the King told him that he had no time tolisten to him. Whereat the veteran took great umbrage and, slappinghis sword, let the King know that he had served him well and wasentitled to better treatment. Christian snatched the weapon in angerand struck him with the scabbard. The sailor never got over it. "Hewithered away and died," says the tradition. It was the oldsuperstition; but whether that killed him or not, the King lost agood man in Jens Munk.

He was not averse to hearing the truth, though, when boldly put.When Ole Vind, a popular preacher, offended some of the nobles byhis plain speech and they complained to the King, he bade him to thecourt and told him to preach the same sermon over. Master Vind wasgame and the truths he told went straight home, for he knew wellwhere the shoe pinched. But King Christian promptly made him courtpreacher. "He is the kind we need here," he said. There was never aday that the King did not devoutly read his Bible, and he wasdetermined that everybody should read it the same way. The resultwas a kind of Puritanism that filled the churches and compelled theemployment of men to go around with long sticks to rap the people onthe head when they fell asleep. Christian the Fourth was not thefirst ruler who has tried to herd men into heaven by battalions. Buthis people would have gladly gone in the fire for him. He was theirfriend. When on his tramps, as likely as not he would come homesitting beside some peasant on his load of truck, and would step offat the palace gate with a "So long, thanks for good company!" He waseverywhere, interested in everything. In his walking-stick hecarried a foot-rule, a level, and other tools, and would stop at thebench of a workman in the navy-yard and test his work to see howwell he was doing it. "I can lie down and sleep in any hut in theland," was his contented boast. And he would have been safeanywhere.

Gustav Adolf was a wise and generous foe. While he lived he refusedto listen to proposals for the partition of Denmark after KingChristian's defeat in Germany. He knew well that she was a barrieragainst the ambition of the German princes and that, once she wasout of the way, Sweden's turn would come next. But when he hadfallen on the battle-field of Luetzen, and his generals, following inhis footsteps, had achieved fame and lands and the freedom ofworship for which he gave his life, the Swedish statesmen lost theirheads and dreamed of the erection of a great northern Protestantstate by the conquest of Denmark and Norway, to balance the powerof the German empire. Without warning or declaration of war a greatarmy was thrown into the Danish peninsula from the south. Anotheradvanced from Sweden upon the eastern provinces, and a fleet hiredin Holland for Swedish money came through the North Sea to help themover to the Danish islands. If the two armies met, Denmark was lost.In Swedish harbors a still bigger fleet was fitting out for theBaltic.

King Christian was well up in the sixties, worn with the tirelessactivities of a long reign; but once more he proved himself greaterthan adversity. When the evil tidings reached him, in the midst ofprofound peace, the enemy was already within the gates. The countrylay prostrate. The name of Torstenson, the Swedish general, spreadterror wherever it was heard. In the German campaigns he had beenknown as the "Swedish Lightning." Beset on every side, never hadDenmark's need been greater. The one man who did not lose his headwas her king. By his personal example he put heart into the peopleand shamed the cowardly nobles. He borrowed money wherever he could,sent his own silver to the mint, crowded the work in the navy-yardby night and by day, gathered an army, and hurried with it to theSounds where the enemy might cross. When the first ships were readyhe sailed around the Skaw to meet the Dutch hirelings. "I am old andstiff," he said, "and no good any more to fight on land. But I canmanage the ships."

And he did. He met the Dutchmen in the North Sea, in under theDanish coast, and whipped them, almost single-handed, for his ownship _Trefoldigheden_ was for a long while the only one that windand tide would let come up with them. That done, he left one of hiscaptains to watch lest they come out from among the islands wheretheir ships of shallower draught had sought refuge, and sailed forCopenhagen. Everything that could carry sail was ready for him bythat time; also the news that the Swedish fleet of forty-sixfighting ships under Klas Fleming had sailed for the coast ofHolstein to take on board Torstenson's army.

King Christian lost no time. He hoisted his flag on _Trefoldigheden_and made after them with thirty-nine ships, vowing that he wouldwin this fight or die. At Kolberger Heide, the water outside theFjord of Kiel, he caught up with them and attacked at once. Thebattle that then ensued is the one of which the poet sings and withwhich the name of Christian IV is forever linked.

At the outset the Danish fleet was in great peril. The Swedes foughtgallantly as was their wont, and they were three or four againstone, for most of the King's ships came up slowly, some of thempurposely, so it seems. The King said after the battle of certain ofhis captains, "They used me as a screen between them and the enemy."His own ship and that of his chief admiral's bore the brunt of thebattle for a long time. _Trefoldigheden_ fired 315 shots during theengagement, and at one time had four hostile, ships clustering abouther. King Christian was on the quarter-deck when a cannon-ballshivered the bulwark and one of his guns, throwing a shower ofsplintered iron and wood over him and those near him, killing andwounding twelve of the crew. The King himself fell, stunned andwounded in twenty-three places. His right eye was knocked out, twoof his teeth, and his left ear hung in shreds.

The cry was raised that the King was dead and panic spread on board.The story has it that a sailor was sent aloft to strike the flag butpurposely entangled it in the rigging so that it could not fall; hecould not bear to see the King's ship strike its colors. In themidst of the tumult the aged monarch rose to his feet, torn andcovered with blood. "I live yet," he cried, "and God has left mestrength to fight on for my country. Let every man do his duty."Leaning on his sword, he led the fight until darkness fell and thebattle was won. Denmark was saved. The danger of an invasion wasaverted. In the palace of Rosenborg the priceless treasure they showto visitors is the linen cloth, all blood-stained, that bound theKing's face as he fought and won his last and biggest fight thatday.

Half blind, his body black and blue and sore from many bruises, KingChristian yet refused to sail for Copenhagen to have his woundsattended. Three weeks he lay watching the narrow inlet behind whichthe beaten enemy was hiding, to destroy his ships when he came out.Then he gave over the command to another and hastened to theprovince of Skaane on the Swedish mainland, from which he expelled ahostile army. But when his back was turned, the men he had set towatch fell asleep and let the Swedish admiral steal out into theopen. There he found and joined the Dutch ships that had slippedaround the Skaw during the rumpus. Together they overwhelmed theDanish fleet, being now three to one, and crushed it. The slothfuladmiral paid for it with his life, but the harm was done. It was thelast and heaviest blow. The old King sheathed his sword and set hisname to a peace that took from Denmark some of her ancientprovinces, with the bitter sigh: "God knows I had no share in this,"and he had not. Even at the last he appealed to the country to trythe fortunes of war with him once more. The people were willing, butthe nobles wanted peace, "however God send it," and he had to yield.The treaty was made at Broemsebro, where a bridge crossed the riverdividing the two kingdoms. In the middle of the river was an islandand the negotiations were carried on in a tent erected there, theFrench and the Dutch being the arbitrators. The envoys of Swedenand Denmark sat on opposite sides of the boundary post where theline cut through, each on the soil of his own country. So bitterlydid they hate one another that they did not speak but wrote theirmessages, though they could have shaken hands where they sat. Eventhat was too close quarters, and they ended up by negotiating atsecond hand through the foreign ambassadors, all at the same table,but each looking straight past the other as if he were not there.

Another touch of comedy relieves the gloom of that heavy day. It wasthe conquest of the Saernadal, a mountain valley in Norway just overthe Swedish frontier, by Pastor Buschovius who, Bible in hand, atthe head of two hundred ski-men invaded and captured it one winter'sday without a blow. He came over the snow-fields into the valleythat had not seen a preacher in many a long day, had the churchbells rung to summon the people, preached to them, married andchristened them, and gave them communion. The simple mountaineershad hardly heard of the war and had nothing against their neighborsover the mountain. They joined Sweden then and there at the requestof the preacher, and they stayed Swedes too, for in the final musterthey were forgotten with their valley. Very likely the treaty-makersdid not know that it existed.

King Christian died four years later, in 1648, past the three scoreand ten allotted to man. He was not a great leader like GustavAdolf, and he was very human in some of his failings. But he was astrong man, a just king, and a father of his people who still clingto his memory with more than filial affection.

GUSTAV ADOLF, THE SNOW-KING

The city of Prague, the capital of Bohemia, went wild withexcitement one spring morning in the year 1618. The ProtestantEstates of Germany had met there to protest against the aggressionsof the Catholic League and the bad faith of the Emperor, who hadguaranteed freedom of worship in the land and had now sent twoenvoys to defy the meeting and declare it illegal. In the old castlethey delivered their message and bade the convention disperse; andthe delegates, when they had heard, seized them and their clerk andthrew them out of the window "in good old Bohemian fashion." Theyfell seventy feet and escaped almost without a scratch, which factwas accepted by the Catholics of that strenuous day as proof oftheir miraculous preservation; by the Protestants as evidence thatthe devil ever takes care of his own.

It was the tiny spark that set Europe on fire. Out of it grew theThirty Years' War, the most terrible that ever scourged thecivilized world. When Catholic League and Evangelical Union firstmustered their armies, Bohemia had a prosperous population of fourmillion souls; when the war was over there were less than eighthundred thousand alive in that unhappy land, and the wolves thatroamed its forests were scarcely more ferocious than the humanstarvelings who skulked among the smoking ruins of burned towns andhamlets. Other states fared little better. Two centuries did notwipe out the blight of those awful years when rapine and murder,inspired by bigotry and hate, ran riot in the name of religion.

In the gloom and horror of it all a noble figure stands forth alone.It were almost worth the sufferings of a Thirty Years' War for theworld to have gained a Gustav Adolf. The "snow-king" the Emperor'sgenerals named him when he first appeared on German soil at the headof his army of Northmen, and they prophesied that he would speedilymelt, once the southern sun shone upon his host. They little knewthe man. He went from victory to victory, less because he was thegreatest general of his day than because he, and all his army withhim, believed himself charged by the Almighty with the defence ofhis country and of his faith. The Emperor had attacked both, thefirst by attempting to extend his dominion to the Baltic; butPommerania and the Baltic provinces were regarded by the Swedishruler as the outworks of his kingdom; and Sweden was Protestant.Hence he drew the sword. "Our brethren in the faith are sighing fordeliverance from spiritual and bodily thraldom," he said to hispeople. "Please God, they shall not sigh long." That was hiswarrant. Axel Oxenstjerna, his friend and right hand who lived tofinish his work, said of him, "He felt himself impelled by a mightyspirit which he was unable to resist." As warrior, king, and man, hewas head and shoulders above his time. Gustav Adolf saved religiousliberty to the world. He paid the price with his life, but he wouldhave asked no better fate. A soldier of God, he met a soldier'sdeath on the field of battle, in the hour of victory.

A man of destiny he was to his people as to himself. Long yearsbefore his birth, upon the appearance of the comet of 1577, TychoBrahe, the astronomer, who was deep in the occultism of his day, hadpredicted that a prince would appear in Finland who would do greatthings in Germany and deliver the Protestant peoples from theoppression of the popes, and the prophecy was applied to GustavAdolf by his subjects all through his life. He was born on December9, 1594, old style, as they still reckon time in Russia. Very earlyhe showed the kind of stuff he was made of. When he was yet almost ababy he was told that there were snakes in the park, and showedfight at once: "Give me a stick and I will kill them." With theyears he grew into a handsome youth who read his books, knew hisSeneca by heart, was fond of the poets and the great orators, andmastered eight languages, living and dead. At seventeen he buckledon the sword and put the books away, but kept Xenophon as hisfriend; for he was a military historian after his own heart. He wasthen Duke of Finland.

The King, his father, was a stern but observant man who, seeing hisbent, threw him with soldiers to his heart's content, glad to haveit so, for it was a warlike age. From his tenth year he let him sitin council with him and early delegated to him the duty of answeringambassadors from foreign countries. The lad was the only one whodared oppose the king when he was in a temper, and often he madepeace and healed wounds struck in anger. The people worshipped thefair young prince, and his father, when he felt the palsy of old ageand bodily infirmities creeping upon him and thought of hisunfinished tasks, would murmur as his eyes rested upon the bonnyyouth: "_Ille faciet_--He will do it." There is still in existence adocument in which he laid down to him his course as a sovereign."First of all," he writes, "you shall fear God and honor your fatherand mother. Give your brothers and sisters brotherly affection; loveyour father's faithful servants and requite them after their due. Begracious to your subjects; punish evil and love the good. Believe inmen, but find out first what is in them. Hold by the law withoutrespect of person."

It was good advice to a prince, and the king took it to heart. Onthe docket of the Supreme Court at Stockholm is a letter written byGustav Adolf to the judges and ordered by him to be entered there,which tells them plainly that if any of them is found pervertingjustice to suit him, the King, or any one else, he will have himflayed alive and his hide nailed to the judgment-seat, his earsto the pillory! Not a nice way of talking to dignified judges,perhaps, but then the prescription was intended to suit thepractice, if there was need.

The young king earned his spurs in a war with Denmark that came nearbeing his last as it was his first campaign. He and his horsemenwere surprised by the Danes on a winter's night as they were warmingthemselves by a fire built of the pews in the Wittsjoe church, andthey cut their way through only after a desperate fight on thefrozen lake. The ice broke under the king's horse and he was goingdown when two of his men caught him in the nick of time. He got awaywith the loss of his sword, his pistols, and his gloves. "I willremember you with a crust that shall do for your bairns too," hepromised one of his rescuers, a stout peasant lad, and he kept hisword. Thomas Larsson's descendants a generation ago still tilled thefarm the King gave him. When the trouble with Denmark was over forthe time being, he settled old scores with Russia and Poland in away that left Sweden mistress of the Baltic. In the Polish war hewas wounded twice and was repeatedly in peril of his life. Once hewas shot in the neck, and, as the bullet could not be removed, itever after troubled him to wear armor. His officers pleaded with himto spare himself, but his reply was that Caesar and Alexander did notskulk behind the lines; a general must lead if he expected his mento follow.

In this campaign he met the League's troops, sent to chase him backto his own so that Wallenstein, the leader of the imperial armies,might be "General of the Baltic Sea," unmolested. "Go to Poland," hecommanded one of his lieutenants, "and drive the snow-king out; orelse tell him that I shall come and do it myself." The proud soldiernever knew how near he came to entertaining the snow-king as hisunwilling guest then. In a fight between his rear-guard and theimperial army Gustav Adolf was disarmed and taken prisoner by twotroopers. There was another prisoner who had kept his pistol. Hehanded it to the King behind his back and with it he shot one of hiscaptors and brained the other. For all that they nearly got him. Hesaved himself only by wriggling out of his belt and leaving it inthe hands of the enemy. Eight years he campaigned in Poland andPrussia, learning the arts of war. Then he was ready for hislife-work. He made a truce with Poland that freed his hands for aseason, and went home to Sweden.

That spring (1629) he laid before the Swedish Estates his plan offreeing the Protestants. To defend Sweden, he declared, was todefend her faith, and the Estates voted supplies for the war. Togauge fully the splendid courage of the nation it must be rememberedthat the whole kingdom, including Finland, had a population of onlya million and a half at the time and was preparing to attack themighty Roman empire. In the first year of the war the Swedish budgetwas thirteen millions of dollars, of which nine and a half went forarmaments. The whole army which Gustav Adolf led into Germanynumbered only 14,000 soldiers, but it was made up of Swedishveterans led by men whose names were to become famous for all time,and welded together by an unshakable belief in their commander, arigid discipline and a religious enthusiasm that swayed master andmen with a common impulse. Such a combination has in all days provenirresistible.

The King's farewell to his people--he was never to see Swedenagain--moved a nation to tears. He spoke to the nobles, the clergyand to the people, admonishing them to stand together in the hardyears that were coming and gave them all into the keeping of God.They stood on the beach and watched his ships sail into the sunsetuntil they were swallowed up in glory. Then they went back home totake up the burden that was their share. On the Ruegen shore the Kingknelt with his men and thanked God for having brought them safeacross the sea, then seized a spade, and himself turned the firstsod in the making of a camp. "Who prays well, fights well," he said.

He was not exactly hospitably received. The old Duke of Pommeraniawould have none of him, begged him to go away, and only when theKing pointed to his guns and hinted that he had keys well able toopen the gates of Stettin, his capital, did he give in and promisehelp. The other German princes, with one or two exceptions, were ascravenly short-sighted. They held meetings and denounced the Emperorand his lawless doings, but Gustav they would not help. The princesof Brandenburg and of Saxony, the two Protestant Electors of theempire, were rather disposed to hinder him, if they might, thoughBrandenburg was his brother-in-law. Only when the King threatened toburn the city of Berlin over his head did he listen. While he wasyet laboring with them, recruiting his army and keeping it inpractice by driving the enemy out of Pommerania, news reached him ofthe fall of Magdeburg, the strongest city in northern Germany, thathad of its own free will joined his cause.

The sacking of Magdeburg is one of the black deeds of history. In anight the populous city was reduced to a heap of smoking ruins underwhich twenty thousand men, women, and children lay buried. Not sincethe fall of Jerusalem, said Pappenheim, Tilly's famous cavalryleader to whom looting and burning were things of every day, had soawful a visitation befallen a town. Only the great cathedral and afew houses near it were left standing. The history of warfare of theChristian peoples of that day reads like a horrid nightmare. Thefighting armies left a trail of black desolation where they passed."They are not made up of birds that feed on air," sneered Tilly.Peaceful husbandmen were murdered, the young women dragged away toworse than slavery, and helpless children spitted upon the lancesof the wild landsknechts and tossed with a laugh into the blazingruins of their homes. But no such foul blot cleaves to the memory ofGustav Adolf. While he lived his men were soldiers, not demons. Inhis tent the work of Hugo Grotius on the rights of the nations inwar and peace lay beside the Bible and he knew them both by heart.When he was gone, the fame of some of his greatest generals wassmirched by as vile orgies as Tilly's worst days had witnessed. Itis told of John Baner, one of the most brilliant of them, that hedemanded ransom of the city of Prix, past which his way led. Thecity fathers permitted themselves an untimely jest: "Prix giebtnichts--Prix gives nothing," they said. Baner was as brief: "Prixwird zu nichts--Prix comes to nothing," and his army wiped it out.

Grief and anger almost choked the King when he heard of Magdeburg'sfate. "I will avenge that on the Old Corporal (Tilly's nickname),"he cried, "if it costs my life." Without further ado he forced thetwo Electors to terms and joined the Saxon army to his own. OnSeptember 7, 1631, fifteen months after he had landed in Germany, hemet Tilly face to face at Breitenfeld, a village just north ofLeipzig. The Emperor's host in its brave show of silver and plumesand gold, the plunder of many campaigns under its invincible leader,looked with contempt upon the travel-worn Swedes in their poor,soiled garb. The stolid Finns sat their mean but wiry little horsesvery unlike Pappenheim's dreaded Walloons, descendants of thewarlike Belgae of Gaul who defied the Germans of old in the forest ofthe Ardennes and joined Caesar in his victorious march. But Tillyhimself was not deceived. He knew how far this enemy had come andwith what hardships cheerfully borne; how they had routed theRussians, written laws for the Poles in their own land, andoverthrown armies and forts that barred their way. He would wait forreinforcements; but his generals egged him on, said age had made himtimid and slow, and carried the day.

The King slept in an empty cart the night before the battle anddreamed that he wrestled with Tilly and threw him, but that he torehis breast with his teeth. When all was ready in the morning he rodealong the front and told his fusiliers not to shoot till they sawthe white in the enemy's eyes, the horsemen not to dull theirswords by hacking the helmets of the Walloons: "Cut at their horsesand they will go down with them." In the pause before the onset heprayed with head uncovered and lowered sword, and his voice carriedto the farthest lines:

Tilly had expected the King to attack, but the fiery Pappenheimupset his plans. The smoke of the guns drifted in the faces of theSwedes and the King swung his army to the south to get the windright. In making the turn they had to cross a brook and this momentPappenheim chose for his charge. Like a thunderbolt his Walloonsfell upon them. The Swedish fire mowed them down like ripened grainand checked their impetuous rush. They tried to turn the King'sright and so outflank him; but the army turned with them and stoodlike a rock. The extreme mobility of his forces was Gustav Adolf'sgreat advantage in his campaigns. He revised the book of militarytactics up to date. The imperial troops were massed in solidcolumns, after the old Spanish fashion, the impact of which was hardto resist when they struck. The King's, on the contrary, moved insmaller bodies, quickly thrown upon the point of danger, and hisartillery was so distributed among them as to make every shot tellon the compact body of the enemy. Whichever way Pappenheim turned hefound a firm front, bristling with guns, opposing him. Seven timeshe threw himself upon the living wall; each time his horsemen wereflung back, their lines thinned and broken. The field was strewnwith their dead. Tilly, anxiously watching, threw up his hands indespair. "This man will lose me honor and fame, and the Emperor hislands," he cried. The charge ended in wild flight, and Tilly sawthat he must himself attack, to turn the tide.

On the double-quick his columns of spearmen charged down theheights, swept the Saxons from the field, and fell upon the Swedishleft. The shock was tremendous. General Gustav Horn gave back to lethis second line come up, and held the ground stubbornly againstfearful odds. Word was brought the King of his danger. With theright wing that had crushed Pappenheim he hurried to the rescue. Inthe heat of the fight the armies had changed position, and theSwedes found themselves climbing the hill upon which Tilly'sartillery was posted. Seeing this, the King made one of the rapidmovements that more than once won him the day. Raising the cry,"Remember Magdeburg!" he carried the position with his Finns by asudden overwhelming assault, and turned the guns upon the densemasses of the enemy fighting below.

In vain they stormed the heights. Both wings and the centre closedin upon them, and the day was lost. Tilly fled, wounded, andnarrowly escaped capture. A captain in the Swedish army, who wascalled Long Fritz because of his great height, was at his heelshammering him on the head with the butt of his pistol. A staffofficer shot him down in passing, and freed his chief. Twilight fellupon a battle-field where seven thousand men lay dead, two-thirds ofthem the flower of the Emperor's army. Blood-stained andsmoke-begrimed, Gustav Adolf and his men knelt on the field andthanked God for the victory.

Had the King's friend and adviser, Axel Oxenstjerna, been with himhe might have marched upon Vienna then, leaving the ProtestantEstates to settle their own affairs, and very likely have ended thewar. Gustav Adolf thought of Tilly who would return with anotherarmy. Oxenstjerna saw farther, weighing things upon the scales ofthe diplomatist.

"How think you we would fare," asked the King once, when thechancellor saw obstacles in their way which he would brush aside,"if my fire did not thaw the chill in you?"

"But for my chill cooling your Majesty's fire," was his friend'sretort, "you would have long since been burned up." The King laughedand owned that he was right.

Instead of bearding the Emperor in his capital he turned toward theRhine where millions of Protestants were praying for his coming andwhere his army might find rest and abundance. The cathedral city ofWuerzburg he took by storm. The bishop who ruled it fled at hisapproach, but the full treasury of the Jesuits fell into his hands.The Madonna of beaten gold and the twelve solid silver apostles,famous throughout Europe, were sent to the mint and coined intomoney to pay his army. In the cellar they found chests filled withducats. The bottom fell out of one as they carried it up and thegold rolled out on the pavement. The soldiers swarmed to pick it up,but a good many coins stuck to their pockets. The King saw it andlaughed: "Since you have them, boys, keep them." The dead were stilllying in the castle yard after the siege, a number of monks amongthem. The color of some of them seemed high for corpses. "Arise fromthe dead," he said waggishly, "no one will hurt you," and thefrightened monks got upon their feet and scampered away.

Frankfort opened its gates to his victorious host and Nuernbergreceived him as a heaven-sent liberator. But Tilly was in the fieldwith a fresh army, burning to avenge Breitenfeld. He had surprisedGeneral Horn at Bamberg and beaten him. At the approach of the Kinghe camped where the river Lech joins the Danube, awaiting attack.There was but one place to cross to get at him, and right there hestood. The king seized Donauworth and Ulm, and under cover of thefire of seventy guns threw a bridge across the Lech. Three hundredFinns carrying picks and spades ran across the shaky planks uponwhich the fire of Tilly's whole artillery park was concentrated.Once across, they burrowed in the ground like moles and, withbullets raining upon them, threw up earthworks for shelter. Squadafter squad of volunteers followed. Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimarswam his horsemen across the river farther up-stream and took theBavarian troops in the flank, beating them back far enough to lethim join the Finns at the landing. The King himself was directingthe artillery on the other shore, aiming the guns with his own hand.The Walloons, Tilly's last hope, charged, but broke under thewithering fire. In desperation the old field-marshal seized thestandard and himself led the forlorn hope. Half-way to the bridge hefell, one leg shattered by a cannon-ball, and panic seized his men.The imperialists fled in the night, carrying their wounded leader.He died on the march soon after. Men said of him that he had servedhis master well.

The snow-king had not melted in the south. He was master of theRoman empire from the Baltic to the Alps. The way to Austria andItaly lay open before him. Protestant princes crowded to do himhomage, offering him the imperial crown. But Gustav Adolf did notlose his head. Toward the humbled Catholics he showed onlyforbearance and toleration. In Munich he visited the college of theJesuits, and spoke long with the rector in the Latin tongue,assuring him of their safety as long as they kept from politics andplotting. The armory in that city was known to be the best stockedin all Europe and the King's surprise was great when he foundgun-carriages in plenty, but not a single cannon. Looking about him,he saw evidence that the floor had been hastily relaid andremembered the "dead" monks at Wuerzburg. He had it taken up and adark vault appeared. The King looked into it.

"Arise!" he called out, "and come to judgment," and amid shouts oflaughter willing hands brought out a hundred and forty good guns,welcome reenforcements.

The ignorant Bavarian peasants had been told that the King was thevery anti-Christ, come to harass the world for its sins, and carriedon a cruel guerilla warfare upon his army. They waylaid the Swedesby night on their foraging trips and maimed and murdered those they